Bruce Joel Rubin wanted Patrick Swayze to play Sam Wheat after he saw an interview Swayze gave. When he brought up his father, Swayze burst into tears. Rubin thought if a macho guy like Patrick Swayze could cry over a loved one, he'd be perfect for Ghost (1990).

When passing through solid objects, ghosts appear to absorb some of the material they are going through. Jerry Zucker had some difficulty explaining what he wanted this effect to look like. Finally, he illustrated it by dipping a napkin into coffee.

Paul Hogan was offered but passed on the role of Sam Wheat because he felt it wasn't funny. However, Paul Hogan offered Patrick Swayze the role of Steve Garner in his supernatural comedy Almost an Angel (1990), but Swayze turned it down to do this film. Elias Koteas got the part instead.

When they were filming the chase scene at night in New York, it was really cold and everyone else was bundled up except for Patrick Swayze's character Sam Wheat and since he's a ghost they didn't want his breath showing so they made him chew ice. So here's Patrick wearing a flimsy shirt and chewing ice while everyone else is wearing warm clothes.

The shirt that Molly is wearing in the police station is the same shirt Sam was wearing at work the day he was late meeting the Japanese clients. It even appears to be wrinkled, as if she hadn't washed it so she could feel closer to Sam.

Shortly before production began, Whoopi Goldberg was unsure if she was going to be able to put this movie into her work schedule. The part was then verbally offered to Jackée Harry, who accepted. However, at the last minute, Goldberg was able to do the film after all and Harry was dropped.

When Demi Moore was cast, she had long hair and didn't tell the director she was going to cut it. Jerry Zucker was shocked and at first didn't like it, but he now thinks it was perfect for her character.

The song Sam sings relentlessly to Oda Mae to get her to agree to help him is "Henry the Eighth, I Am". The lyrics, in part, are "She wouldn't have a Willie or a Sam..." Patrick Swayze's character is named Sam, and the man who murdered him is named Willie.

Starting in the early 1990s (shortly after the release of Ghost), hip-hop lyrics often included Patrick Swayze's name or the phrase "I'm Swayze" as a reference to or replacement for the earlier slang, "I'm ghost", meaning "I'm leaving/out of here/gone, etc." The Notorious B.I.G. was one artist who was especially fond of including this phrase in his songs. Swayze's appearance in the video for Ja Rule's "Murder Reigns" was also a reference to the movie's and his own interesting place in hip-hop culture.

At a 2013 AFI Night at the Movies screening of the film, Demi Moore told the audience her initial feelings on the film. "It's a love story, and it's a guy-a dead guy-trying to save his wife, and there is a comedy part, but really, really it's a love story," Moore said. "And I thought, 'Wow, this is really a recipe for disaster.' It's either going to be something really special, really amazing, or really an absolute bust." She went on to talk about what made the film special. "I think the beauty in this film is that none of us knew, and the alchemy that came together with Whoopi and Patrick, and our film editor, Walter Murch, and Adam Greenberg, our DP, it just had a magic."

The subway scenes were filmed on the abandoned lower level of the 42nd St. station of the IND 8th Ave. line. Trains appearing in the film wrong-railed through the station; that is, they ran in the opposite direction of normal operation.

Whoopi Goldberg's character is named Oda Mae Brown. Later in the film, she briefly uses the name Rita Miller. Taken together, the names are a friendly shout-out to writer Rita Mae Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle.

In her first role, Sondra Rubin playing a nun was ironic because she never went out in public without makeup. She is the real life mother of Bruce Joel Rubin, the film's screenwriter, and was given a cameo in the film.

Currently on the market is the spacious 4,341-square-foot loft at 102 Prince Street, where Sam and Molly got clay all over themselves, and where they said their final goodbyes. The loft was originally listed for $10.5 million but was recently lowered to a more budget-friendly $10 million. It has three bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths, and a Sub-Zero refrigerator.

Oda Mae Brown tells Molly that Willie Lopez lives at 303 Prospect Place Apt 4D, but the actual apartment building used for the exterior shots is located at 592 Prospect Place in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn.

In the apartment of Oda Mae Brown and her two sisters, you can see for a few seconds a poster of The Who on the outside of the bedroom door next to the bathroom as Sam's ghost is pushing and scaring Willy who ends up knocking the poster down and falls into the bathroom area.

In 2013 it was reported that Paramount TV had tapped writer-producer Akiva Goldsman and showrunner Jeff Pinkner to write a pilot based on the movie. Since then, no info has been released as to whether the pilot actually came to fruition. Honestly, some things are best left in the grave.

Spoilers

The trivia items below may give away important plot points.

link=nm0000246] was offered the role as Sam but turned it down because he didn't think the movie would work with the main character being dead most of the movie. When Ghost went on to become a huge success he referred to himself as a "knucklehead" for saying no. Nine years later he said yes to playing another main character who is dead most of the movie - but doesn't know it - in The Sixth Sense (1999), which also went on to become a huge success.

Molly tells Sam that he "leads a charmed life." This is a line from William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Macbeth also claims to lead a charmed life, meaning he cannot be killed. Immediately after making this claim, however, he is killed. Sam is killed after seeing a production of Macbeth.

link=nm0350079] (who was considered for the role of Willie Lopez) revealed in a documentary focused on character actors that he's frequently stopped by fans of the movie who think he's the actor who played Sam's killer. People ask him why he killed Patrick Swayze to which he always replies that Rick Aviles - the actor in question - was the one who did it.

link=nm0001282] recalled to the A.V. Club in 2014 that his role as the conniving, murderous Carl prompted a waitress to refuse to serve him. He couldn't figure out why she was shooting him death stares until she finally asked him if he was an actor. "She said, "I'm so sorry! I knew I hated you, but I didn't know where from, and because I couldn't place who you were,' " Goldwyn said.

Troughout the movie appear a total of 20 ghosts: -Sam Wheat. -An old man who talks with Sam in the hospital, explaining that he's waiting for his wife in the cardiac wing. -A young man who dies in an operating room, ascending by a white light tunnel. -A woman in a blue dress at the cemetery during Sam's funeral. -Ghost of a man in black in the subway. -Eleven ghosts who appear in Spiritual Advisor (Oda Mae's store), plus two more who appear entering in the shop. -Willie Lopez. -Carl Bruner.

In the movie appear several supernatural phenomenons: -Ghosts close to living people (Sam stands at Molly's side, instead of advancing to the Afterlife). -Possession (Orlando's ghost enters in Oda Mae Brown's body). -Mediumnity (Oda Mae realizes that she can hear ghosts; later too can see them). -Poltergeist (ghost in black moves physical objects in the subway; eventually Sam learns it).

Although the concept light white tunnel that move souls from Earth to Afterlife was "discovered" to the world population by Dr. Raymond Moody in 1975, the first person in show it was Hieronymus Bosch, a Renaissance's painter who in 1490 made a painting called "Ascent of the Blessed". In the painting can be seen through concentric circles a tunnel used by some souls to travel to Afterlife.

Part of the events seen in the movie are taken indirectly from the book "Life After Life", written by Dr. Raymond Moody and published in 1975, a series of compilations about people who by a brief time were dead and later lived again, called NDE or Near-Death Experience. Between them, the concept of a light white tunnel, which appears when a person dies to take his soul to Afterlife (in the movie it appear three times: when Sam dies, when a man dies in an operating room and when Sam saves Oda Mae and Molly, completing his unfinished business). The second part is the idea of black spirits who capture the souls of bad people to take to other side of Afterlife, called Lower Astral, a place similar to Catholic Hell to punish and torture them. The third part is people, maybe friends and familiars, who wait to receive to the recent dead to Afterlife. It is showed when Sam walks to Afterlife at the end of the movie, where he mixes with a lot of spirits who wait for him (as they appear in diffuse figures in blue, it's impossible to know if they are Sam's friend or familiars).